Thursday, 12 January 2017

It was the night before
Christmas and Qingdao lit and dressed up and became Christmas for the weekend.
Trees suddenly springing up out of nowhere with plastic beer bottle trees, Tsingtao
beer, beer garlands.

With this liking for
Christmas, last minute Qingdao weddings happened outside St. Michael’s Cathedral.
This monument built by German missionaries, which stands on a hilltop in the
centre of Qingdao. A symbol. Since 1934 it has seen wars, peace, and Mao's
arrival. The city beacon, like a lighthouse, where weddings and funerals merge.

Outside the Cathedral, the courtyard hosts hurdy-gurdy players, street artists,
cotton-candy-sellers and starfish on sticks. Pretty girls and lithe boys make
wedding vows to love and live forever. Central to Qingdao and towering far
above the rest, it represents the local community and lures the tourists.
Loved, adorned and sometimes feared, St. Michael’s neighborhood is a life unto itself.

Just down the road is Little Bar, Big Culture, where the boss
is deaf and dumb, and beer is sold not only in pints, but in plastic bags for
takeaways. In here, in the size of a small bedroom, chairs and tables are
pushed together with a small TV, the mangy old dog, and enough cigarette smoke
to choke ya for a year…but it is home from home.

Locals come in, from all
walks of life, for their 50c cup of beer. They call it “Small Bar, Big Culture”
because they come and talk about everything and anything, sort the world out,
work out every problem, sing, get tiddly, make merry the whole night long.

On Christmas Eve we went
by to have some beer and food. The tiny kitchen and the cook, a female family
member who never talks and never lingers with the customers, somehow manages to serve up food all day long. You
can bring your own fish to grill or slice up into a delicious dish. Apparently,
an old man turned up with a fish draping down onto the floor, from waist to
toes. We heard four different versions of the story and later ate the evidence
with garlic and ginger and dollops of beer.

Beer is extremely
important here in Shandong Province. The Germans brought in beer in 1900; the
rest is history. Every street has its recipe. Bars pop up like daisies. Beer
barrels festoon corners, there is camaraderie in beer - Pijioa - light, happy frothy beer, made from the clear waters of
Laoshan Mountain. The breadwinner of Shandong. Everyone drinks beer, like drinking
water. Women. men, even kids, grow up with a small glass of beer.

It was on the 31s December,
two years ago, in Montreal, that our letter of acceptance from the Beijing Film Academy,
Qingdao Campus, droppedthrough the letterbox at 2:30 pm. I
trudged through the newly fallen snow to my daughter’s house to celebrate. The
first thing she asked me was: “Will you miss our Montreal snow, Mama? Will you miss our snow in China?”

I walked down to the beach, where I spent most
of New Year’s Eve beachcombing. The fog lifted in the early afternoon.

Silver Beach is more windswept, forlorn and
desolate than Golden Beach, and sometimes too full of sprits. The locals tell stories
of shipwrecks and lonesome sailors – when I see shoes washed up to shore I
think of drowned bodies. I wish I didn’t, but I do. You might too.

Dotted along the shoreline are tombstones which
look out over the water. But today, for some reason, this seemed the best place
to hang out and wait for the fireworks.

I lay on the nearly midnight, New Year sands
and remembered how the last days in Montreal
were almost surreal, saying goodbye, having parties, finishing off last minute
films…leaving the city which had been home for sixteen years, and where I
learnt my craft as a filmmaker, at Concordia’s film school.

I had bought a one-way ticket to Beijing.
I love one-way tickets; they mean you are not coming back, not for a long time.
Our plane flew over Iran and the Persian Gulf, fire flames below from the
petrol flares danced like wild gypsy campfires. I had not been via the Middle
East for many years, and an old yearning stirred, something I cannot explain.
Intense excitement flooded my soul, and at that moment the child in front of me
turned round - fat chubby cheeks, violet eyes, the mixing of two races
splattering east and west over his face. He held out a sticky hand with a small
Chinese good luck plastic charm, like you get from a Christmas cracker. He
dropped it into my hand, and I knew, no matter what, that things would be okay.

Firecrackers pierced the
skies, and from far I heard a fanfare play. And still a single light shone from
the 5-star toilets, where the husband and wife team closed up for the night.
And on the way home I met Mr. Inspector doing the last of his rounds.

Qingdao Independent Film Festival

Once a year there is an
independent film festival in Qingdao, run by documentary filmmaker Zimo Lin. It
is a rare occasion to see films and have a chance to speak to the directors who
come from all over China. The festival runs for two weeks. We cram the small upstairs
space in the city library to view works of fiction, experimental and documentary.

Zhou Hao’s awe inspiring fable The Chinese Mayor can be seen on Netflix. Hao is one of the most successful independent
Chinese directors. His work is slightly edgy, yet stays within the confines of 'safe'.

He
kicked off the festival, a humble, gentle man, who spent three years following
the People’s Mayor, Geng Yanbo, in the town of Datong. Yanbo wants to find an invigorating way to
stimulate the economy of this sagging town and is convinced it can be
revitalized through tourism and bringing work to the community. He has a huge
dream, to create a sort of Forbidden City housing museums, cafes, art houses
and cinemas. To make the dream come true he has to relocate 30% of the town’s population -
about 500,000 people. We follow his struggles as he works with government and
contractors on the one hand and, on the other, citizens who are riddled with
fear and emotion about leaving their homes. The sub-plot which runs underneath is
the stress of him being relocated before the project can be finished.

Hao
often filmed alone, and much was hand-held - Direct Cinema. It is a truly
beautiful testimony to one man’s dedication to the citizens. It was given
the Special Jury Award for Unparalleled Access in 2015 at Sundance Film Festival. Watch the
trailer below:

Li Hiquali’s fiction
film, A Winter Vacation, won the
Leopard D’Or at Locarno in 2010. It could be a suburb in Montreal, a back-end
ally, a rundown housing project, where hopelessness and inertia lie. It was
actually filmed in Mongolia's winter, tracing a lifeline along the rough edges of a no-man’s land where the winter
backdrop becomes a character in itself. The static frames where characters walk
in and out are breathtakingly painful to watch at times, comic in others. Where
the protagonists - children, family, youth - examine life in the days left
before the end of the winter vacation.

It is not easy for these
artists to show their work on a large scale. The Beijing Independent Festival
closed down last year, so artists get together to showcase work to small, intimate
audiences. Yet, simmering slowly, like a pot cooking slowly over time, there is
the New Chinese Documentary Film Movement happening - so it is only time.

Spring Break

School is almost over for the year. Spring
break echoes around the corner. But before that, last minute meetings, graduate
students finish up work. Anna, dear Anna – Tianhui - is now applying for Canada,
hoping to get into Concordia University.

Our winter office is cold, we have to wear
coats and hats inside to keep out the chills. Volumes of warm water are drunk
to keep the system happy.

However, we still have time to break away
from end of term pressures to walk and look out over the chilled sea, where
still the mad men swim on and on and on.

Then the doors of school shut, students go
all over China, and we go home. I am going to the UK on Saturday, then to
France, then on to Montreal to see my daughter and my Canadian friends, and
begin the long film journey with Dr. Bethune, our shining star of China.

My favorite statue of him is at the Chinese Medicine
Hospital in old Huangdao. He appears to emulate a soft glow from the marble
stone. Inside, the edifice is quiet bustle under neon colored lights.

We had our annual party in our flat - the last
one ever - as we have to move out, further down the beach, nearer to the fishing
village - one of my favorite parts of the beach, especially the fisherman’s
rundown hut overlooking the sea.

And things in China go QUICKLY - one day we
were having breakfast, the next thing we were told we had to move in five days!

We found the new flat yesterday. Brand new, 16
floors up, looking out to the big bright sea.

We move tomorrow.And so, to finish this off, the only thing left to say is . . .

About Me

Hello, Nǐ hǎo, from Huangdao, China.
Welcome to my blog, from fish to film, about the things and people I encounter on my walks along Jinshatan - Golden Beach - to the film school where I work. Vignettes of various subjects: beach, student life, films, fish, trailers, starfish, lovers, the challenges of working in an all-Chinese environment, and how to get around and about and begin the descent into the curious and wonderful Chinese culture. All depending on the week, for China is forever changing, fast, and things never seem to stay the same for long. Here today, gone tomorrow.
I work at the Beijing Film Academy-College in Qingdao, an annex from Beijing, and the eight kilometre walk from my house takes me along the beach. A journey I have been doing since I came to live here.
I used to write a few descriptive pieces called “Friday Gossip”, and then stopped, for no reason. I guess the end of last semester took its toll, but now I am back, back to the beach, back to old faces and friends. And this time I can speak some Chinese, and am braver, so have more stories to share.